On March 13 in Washington, D.C., EPA and the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) signed a new voluntary partnership to reduce emissions of perfluorocompounds, the most potent and persistent of all global warming gases, by ten percent from 1995 levels by the end of 2010. The SIA is signing this Memorandum of Understanding with EPA on the “PFC Reduction Climate Partnership” on behalf of 21 semiconductor manufacturers. The Partnership will promote global reductions of perfluorocompound gases, including perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride.
Perfluorocompounds have, on average, 10,000 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide over 100 years, plus, they can persist in the atmosphere from 2,000 to 50,000 years. The partnership complements efforts by the World Semiconductor Council and other semiconductor trade associations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Semiconductors manage electronic information in a wide variety of products such as computers and cell phones. Perfluorocompounds are used to clean semiconductor-manufacturing equipment and to etch silicon wafers to create circuitry patterns.
The participating companies are: Advanced Micro Devices, Sunnyvale, Calif.; Agere Systems, Allentown, Pa; Conexant Systems, Newport Beach, Calif.; Dominion Semiconductor, L.L.C., Manassas, Va.; Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, N.Y.; Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, South Portland, Maine; Hewlett Packard, Palo Alto, Calif.; Hyundai Semiconductor America, Eugene, Ore.; IBM Microelectronics Division, Armonk, N.Y.; Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, Calif.; Intersil Corporation, Irvine, Calif.; LSI Logic, Milpitas, Calif.; Micron Technology, Inc., Boise, Idaho; Motorola, Schaumberg, Ill.; National Semiconductor, Santa Clara, Calif.; NEC Electronics, Inc., Japan; Philips Semiconductors, Inc., The Netherlands; Sony Semiconductor Company of America, San Antonio, Texas; ST Microelectronics, Italy; and Texas Instruments, Dallas, Texas.
Based on materials received by FMLink from environ.com
